SecDef & Marines Want To Disperse Across Pacific, But It’s Hard

As Defense Secretary Mark Esper calls for a more dynamic and widely dispersed US presence in the Pacific, work already underway on a new multi-billion dollar US air base on Okinawa — and the relocation of thousands of Marines to a string of bases stretching from Australia to Hawaii — is dragging along, complicating the Pentagon’s desire to shift focus to deter China across the region.

The new airfield project, which would move the existing Marine Corps Air Station at Futenma to a more remote location on Henoko bay on Okinawa’s east coast, has been hampered by decades of legal action by the Okinawa prefecture government along with fresh concerns over the soft, potentially unsteady soil that would lie underneath the two planned airstrips.